Amnesty in Salisbury & South Wiltshire
Promoting human rights from Salisbury UK
We are pleased to attach the latest monthly death penalty report thanks to group member Lesley for compiling it. Note that China – which is believed to execute more of its citizens than the rest of the world combined – is not included since details are a state secret.
The main development post-Christmas 2021 on the UK refugee front has been the announcement of plans for the proposed Afghan Citizens’ Resettlement Scheme, originally promised in the Summer. Ministers confirmed that the resettlement scheme will open this month, providing up to 20,000 Afghan women, children, and others most at risk with a safe and legal route to resettle in the UK.
The ACRS will build upon the UK’s continuing efforts to support those at risk, alongside the relocation of British nationals, and those who supported our armed forces through the Afghan Relocation and Assistance Policy (ARAP).
The ACRS will prioritise:
Minister for Afghan Resettlement, Victoria Atkins, said:
“We are committed to supporting everyone we have evacuated from Afghanistan to make a success of their new life in the UK. I’m very grateful to everyone who has stepped forward to help. The Afghan citizens resettlement scheme provides a safe and legal way for the most vulnerable and at-risk people from Afghanistan to come to the United Kingdom and rebuild their lives, as part of the New Plan for Immigration. Operation Warm Welcome is a huge national effort which could not succeed without the compassion and determination of our partners in local government, the private sector, voluntary organisations and the great British public. “
Further details will be set out this month, but a row has immediately broken out about how many of the refugees are among those already in the UK and whether the “most vulnerable” will be able to be resettled before 2023.
In 2021 a total of 28,300 refugees and asylum seekers arrived in England by boat, three times the number for 2020. The largest number arrived in November, many of them from Afghanistan. The sharp increase in numbers is at least partly accounted for by the reduction in ferry crossings post-COVID and the tighter control of lorries using the Channel Tunnel.
Government figures show that only 1,171 refugees were granted protection through resettlement schemes in the year to September.
Border Force officers are threatening to strike in response to Home Secretary Priti Patel’s Channel “pushback” tactics. The Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) said it was “totally opposed” to Patel’s tactics, which would see Border Force jet skis block and redirect migrant boats in the Channel back toward France. Both PCS and the Care4Calais charity have announced they’ll take the Home Office to court over the policy, while PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka said his members could go further by striking and refusing to implement it.
Home Office policy
The Independent revealed that the government has given more than £700,000 to a “migration behaviour change” company that runs communications campaigns targeting asylum seekers in their home countries.
The Home Secretary ‘s latest thinking on asylum seekers seems to be directed at keeping even tighter control of those awaiting decisions. Under the Home Office’s “new plan for immigration”, Patel is expected to announce early in the new year that small boat arrivals will be electronically tagged.
Ministers also hope tagging working-age people will make it harder for them to work illegally while their asylum claims are processed, and make it easier to remove those whose application for asylum has failed. The plan has been described as “desperate and draconian” by the chief executive of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants.
New bill
The Nationalities and Borders bill continues its progress, having now had a second reading in the Lords. The government’s current emphasis was expressed by Home Office minister Tom Pursglove, who said that the government was reforming its approach to asylum through its new plan for immigration.
“Seeking asylum for protection should not involve people asylum shopping country to country, or risking their lives by lining the pockets of criminal gangs to cross the Channel,” he said. “The nationality and borders bill will make it a criminal offence to knowingly arrive in the UK illegally and introduce life sentences for those who facilitate illegal entry into the country. It will also strengthen the powers of Border Force to stop and redirect vessels, while introducing new powers to remove asylum seekers to have their claims processed outside the UK.”
Free Movement have concluded that the changes to the bill have made it worse, mainly in the area of making it more difficult for asylum seekers to get hearings: “This Bill will entrench existing problems: people with a legitimate basis to stay in the UK – and genuine grounds to fear removal – can be removed without effective access to justice. Making it legally easier to remove people from the UK in principle does nothing to make the system any more efficient in practice. Greater effort should be made to increase the quality and accuracy of Home Office decision-making in the first place.”
Bridget Chapman, a blogger and refugee charity worker has noted the Home Office’s claims about the ages of migrants – her comments follow (courtesy of Free Movement)
However, the biggest attacks on the bill have been about Clause 9, the ability of the Home Secretary to remove British citizenship more easily than at present. It has been suggested that this leaves up to 6 million citizens in jeopardy of such an eventuality.
On campaigning, note that the organisers of Refugee Week will be holding their planning conference online on two dates:
Monday 7 February 1030am – 1245pm
Friday 11 February 1030am – 1215pm
Places are available.
Other bills which will have an effect on human rights were discussed in a previous post.
A Report has been produced by Korea Future containing detailed evidence of the scale and extent of religious persecution taking place in North Korea. Entitled: Persecuting Faith: Documenting religious freedom violations in North Korea (vol 2) It is based on 456 documented cases of human rights violations involving 244 victims and 141 perpetrators.
There are two mains religious beliefs in North Korea: Shamanism and Christianity. Both are severely persecuted and those thought or accused of engaging in either are subject to brutal treatment. This includes physical beatings, ingestion of polluted food, positional torture, sleep deprivation and forced squat jumps.
The Ministry of People’s Security are responsible for 90% of the documented serious human rights violations against Shamanic adherents and the Ministry of State Security is responsible for 90% of violations against Christians. The difference is that Christianity is seen as a political crime and adherents are tried in secret. To possess a bible is to risk death.
Sources: Korea Future; Private Eye
We are pleased to report that the number of views to this site was an all-time record in 2021 at 8,375. This is an increase of 28% on 2020 itself a record. Well over six thousand were from the USA and just under a thousand from the UK. A surprise is over 200 from PRC, China where almost certainly sites such as this are blocked due partly to our references to the abuses of the Uyghurs.
We wish a happy New Year to our readers and followers.
The Supreme Court in Moscow today (Tuesday, 28 December 2021) ordered the closure of the human rights group Memorial is a move which is seen as another step in the route to greater authoritarianism by President Putin in Russia. The group fell foul of the ‘foreign agent’ law, a law passed in 2016 to make life difficult for human rights groups to operate in the country. The prosecution accused the group of ‘creating a false image of USSR as a terrorist state’. Memorial sought to shed light on the horrors of the Stalin era when millions died in a vast network of gulags.
Amnesty International described the decision as ‘a grave insult to the victims of the Russian gulag’. With suppression of opposition parties – Navalny is imprisoned for example – and the intimidation or murder of journalists, Russia is living up to its sobriquet of a ‘gangster state’.
May we wish all our supporters, readers and followers a happy Christmas and a happy New Year. We have had an increase in readership to this site this year which is very gratifying although sadly, we seldom get much in the way of interaction. Human rights are increasingly important and the local group will be focusing on the threat to the UK Human Rights Act which the government would like to see neutered in various ways. We are also concerned about the bills the government is pushing through to limit protest and to reduce the powers of the courts to hold the government to account.
We have welcomed several new members this year and it is a shame that we cannot meet in person more often because of Covid.
The group carried out its annual carol singing around a selection of streets in Salisbury on Monday. The actual carols were sung by the excellent Farrant Singers who split into two groups. Because of Covid we could not enter the host’s house for soup and cheese which in previous years has been an enjoyable end to the evening. We are grateful as ever for the support of the Farrants and the residents many of whom gave generously to Amnesty. We are also grateful to group member Chantal for providing the hospitality.
Dr. Osama Yassin is a paediatrician – but right now, he is sitting on death row in Egypt – where there is human rights crisis.
He was arrested in 2013 and has been in solitary confinement since – often denied food and water. He was sentenced to death alongside 11 other men in a mass trial of 739 people and faces imminent execution.
No specific evidence was introduced against Dr Osama in his trial.
This is reproduced from a message from Reprieve. If you can add your name to their petition that would be wonderful. You can access it here.
It has been a long term ambition of some Conservative politicians to either abolish or seriously curtail the HRA. In 2006 David Cameron said he wanted to scrap the HRA and replace it with a British Bill of Rights. The Justice Secretary, Dominic Raab, wrote a book The Assault on Liberty: What Went Wrong with Rights which we earlier reviewed, which set out his arguments. We suggested there that the reasoning was flawed, feeble and far from historically accurate. Along with three other members of the current cabinet, he contributed to Britannia Unchanged with its much quoted derogatory remarks about British workers who were alleged to be the laziest in the world. There is footage of him saying ‘I don’t support the Human Rights Act and I don’t believe in economic and social rights’.
The Conservative position has received much support in the right wing and tabloid press. Articles regularly appear which assert the act is used to give succour to terrorists, foreign criminals and – most famously – reporting Theresa May’s claim that it was a cat which stood in the way of the deportation of a Chilean national. It wasn’t. Some of the stories are gross exaggerations. Raab even quotes the story of a man in a siege demanding a Kentucky fried chicken because it was his ‘human right’ despite admitting it was not the reason: it was just normal police practice to help defuse a tense situation.
The many benefits the act has brought to the lives of ordinary people are rarely mentioned. Even when, in cases like the Hillsborough disaster, or the events at Deepcut, the act was central to securing justice for the families of those who died, that role is omitted from the coverage. The act has been used in countless cases to secure rights for individuals in their relations with government agencies and local authorities. Its provisions are built into every day provisions in those organisation’s activities.
Review
In December last year the government established a review of the HRA and this was published on 14 December 2021. In short, the Review does not call for substantial changes to the act and argues that it is a good piece of legislation. The ‘vast majority of submissions [were] in support of HRA’ and they argue that ‘more needs to be done to dispose of the negative perceptions of the HRA (paragraph 14). They go on to argue for a ‘stronger focus on civic, constitutional education on the HRA and rights more generally’ (15).
They discuss the ‘margin of appreciation’ that is the degree of subsidiarity and the degree of latitude we have to interpret the law and conclude there is no need to change the current arrangements (26). They were struck by ‘a high level regard in which the UK Courts and Judiciary are held by the ECtHR and the beneficial influence this has, both domestically and for the European Court’ (35).
The Justice Minister announced sweeping changes to the HRA in a statement before the Review was published. The changes will counter ‘wokery and political correctness’ he claimed. It is difficult to reconcile the results of the Review with the statement by Mr Raab of the need for radical reform. It would seem that the decision to make a sweeping overhaul was not informed by the Review but was a decision already decided on.
If we take into account the other bills before parliament: the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts bill and the Judicial Review and Courts bill, they represent, together, a serious attack on our liberties. The ability of ordinary people to assert their rights, to protest or to correct injustice done to them will be seriously curtailed. There is also a proposal to introduce a ‘permissions stage’ before someone can argue their case in court. The right to a family life (art 8) may be removed altogether. As the chief executive of Amnesty International has argued ‘if ministers move ahead with plans to water down the HRA and override judgements with which they disagree they risk aligning themselves with authoritarian regimes around the world’.
In the last few months, we have seen serious failings by those who are meant to look after us. Serious police shortcomings and allegations of institutional racism have been made. The abysmally low level of rape cases which result in successful prosecutions. Serious failings in childcare with the tragic deaths of some small children. There have been failings within government too numerous to itemise. Far from a reduction in the means of redress, we need an increase. Yet the government seems determined to curtail our rights based on false assumptions and a desire for populist support.
It is likely the Salisbury group will be focusing on these assaults in its future campaigning.
At last we are to see what is proposed in a review of the HRA which several in the Conservative Party wish to see changed. The group is likely to campaign against the changes if, as seems likely, they weaken protections that the act presently provides. Taken with other bills currently going through parliament, they represent a serious attack on our liberties and echo actions by authoritarian regimes around the world.
For now, it might be worth highlighting our post on Dominic Raab MP, the Justice Secretary who is one of the proponents of the changes.
Amnesty in Salisbury & South Wiltshire 